“Ac­tiv­ity is now well above the lows reached ear­lier this year, but there is still a long way to go to reach the peak ahead of 2014’s sales tax hike,” Mar­cel Thieliant, se­nior econ­o­mist at Cap­i­tal Eco­nomics in Tokyo, said in a com­men­tary.

The con­sump­tion tax rise two years ago ham­mered spend­ing and pushed Ja­pan into a brief re­ces­sion.

Yes­ter­day’s fig­ures come a day af­ter separate data showed that spend­ing among Japanese house­holds fell for an eighth-straight month in Oc­to­ber, even as the un­em­ploy­ment rate sits at a 21-year low.

Mean­while, in­fla­tion was also weak with core con­sumer prices, which ex­clude volatile fresh food costs, falling again last month to ex­tend its long­est run of de­clines for five years.

Ja­pan pub­lishes re­vised GDP fig­ures for the third quar­ter next week.

Ini­tial data showed the world’s num­ber-three econ­omy grew a bet­terthan-ex­pected 0.5pc be­tween July and Septem­ber, for an an­nu­alised 2.2pc gain.

Ja­pan’s econ­omy con­tracted in the last three months of 2015, be­fore bounc­ing back in Jan­uary-March with a 0.5pc rise on-quar­ter and then a tepid 0.2pc ex­pan­sion in April-June.

Mr Abe came to of­fice in late 2012 and launched a growth plan – a mix of mas­sive mone­tary eas­ing, gov­ern­ment spend­ing and red-tape slash­ing.

The plan sharply weak­ened the yen – fat­ten­ing cor­po­rate prof­its – and set off a stock mar­ket rally that spurred hopes for a once-soar­ing econ­omy caught in a de­fla­tion­ary spi­ral of falling prices and lack­lus­tre growth for five years.

But prom­ises to cut through red tape have been slower, and Mr Abe’s plan to buoy Ja­pan’s once-boom­ing econ­omy have looked in­creas­ingly un­re­al­is­tic. –

Photo: AFP

Shinzo Abe is un­der pres­sure to de­liver on his prom­ise of eco­nomic growth.